"Persis Dale," exclaimed Joel, "you're as crazy as a June bug."
"Look for yourself, then." Persis turned to the secretary where she had placed the letter she had received that morning. She felt more like herself than at any time since she had perused the contents of that final astonishing communication. In combatting Joel's incredulity, she was able to set at rest certain disquieting doubts of her own as to her sanity.
Joel's jaw dropped as he read. "Mrs. Persis Ann Crawford. Why, that must mean Aunt Persis."
"Sure. The one I was named for. And I guess it's a good twenty-five years since we've had a line from her." She laughed a little hysterically, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. "I don't s'pose I'm crying because she's dead, seeing I took it for granted that she'd passed away years ago. And yet all the time to leave me her money. Ain't life the funniest mix-up. Yesterday I couldn't have afforded so much as a sick-headache. And now if I want a run of typhoid fever or my appendix cut out, it's nobody's business."
Joel laid down the letter with a gulp. The impression uppermost in his mind was the singular blindness of fortune in selecting the recipients of its bounty.
"It's a good deal of a responsibility for a woman," he said ruefully. "Seeing I'm the oldest, it's rather odd Aunt Persis Ann didn't realize that I was the proper one to inherit. But I guess she thought it was all in the family, and you'd be guided by my advice."
Persis' answer was irrelevant. "Joel, seems to me that so far my life's been for all the world like a checked gingham, if you know what I mean."
But Joel did not know. "Checked gingham! I never heard such crazy talk."
"Made up of the same little things, all just alike," Persis explained patiently. "And nothing especially bright or cheerful about any of 'em. I've a feeling as if I'd like a splash of color now, velvet as green as grass and fire-red satin."
"Sounds as if you had the Scarlet Woman in mind," Joel said disapprovingly, and before Persis had time to explain, young Mrs. Thompson had knocked. She was a sorry figure for a wife of less than a year's standing, a drooping little woman, pale, listless and heavy-eyed.